Many people start cloaker setup by asking “which boxes should I tick”. A better starting point is different: every campaign needs three things to be clear: where a real person goes, whom the filter blocks and what the blocked visitors see. In ArtisanClo all of this comes together in a single entity, the flow. Below is the complete path, from preparing the White Page to the first click in the log.
If terms like “offer”, “White Page” and “cloaking” still feel fuzzy, start with what is cloaking.
What to prepare before cloaker setup
- The offer: the page a real buyer should land on, either your landing page or an affiliate network link.
- The White Page: a neutral page for filtered visits: bots, scanners, spy tools and untargeted traffic. You can build one from the catalog right in the dashboard or specify your own URL.
- A site you can access: either the page
<head>or files on the hosting; that is where the code goes. - An understanding of the platform: where the traffic will come from and which geos you are buying.
Step 0. The White Page and the traffic source
Build the White Page
Go to the White Page section → pick a design → Tell us about the site (what the site does, language, region, key services) → Build site. The build takes about a minute. You can edit the text and images afterwards. You do not need to upload the finished page anywhere: it opens at your ad URL.
A white page is an ordinary page on the site's topic: a real person can land on it too, for example someone filtered out by geo or because of a VPN, so an empty placeholder is worse here than a tidy site. What it can look like and why you need it is covered in what is a White Page.
Add a source
Go to Sources → Add a source → pick a platform template (for example, Facebook). There are around 180 templates; if your platform is not there, add it via search. A source stores the link parameters, SubID parameters, the cost model and the postback to the ad platform. Choosing it in a flow tunes the protection to the platform.
Step 1. Destinations: where the traffic goes
Open Flows → Create flow. The form has four steps; for a new flow they open in order, and the Continue button moves you forward.
Flow mode
| Mode | What happens | When to choose it |
|---|---|---|
| Cloaking | Bots, scanners and spy tools go to the White Page, people go to the offer | Traffic with a noticeable bot share, a funnel you need to protect from copying |
| Tracker | Everyone goes to the offer, money is counted, bots are only flagged | Traffic that needs tracking rather than filtering |
| Cloaking + Tracker | The filter blocks, money is counted on passed visits | You need both protection and full tracking |
Tracker mode works with the PHP file setup; through the JS tag such a flow filters like a regular cloaker. What the tracker does and why you need it is covered in tracker for affiliate marketing.
Source, name, offer
- Traffic source: choose the one you created in step 0.
- Flow name: required, for example “FB — Nutra — DE”. Only you and your team see it.
- Offer pages: the offer URL with
http://orhttps://. Display mode: Loading (the offer page opens under your ad URL; this is the default), Redirect (302) or Frame.
If there are several offers, each gets a Weight field for weighted rotation, adding up to exactly 100%. This makes it easy to compare offers against each other.
White Page
Required. Three options:
- your own URL, in Loading or Redirect mode;
- our ready-made page, from the Or let us show ours — no address list, which is where the page you built in step 0 appears;
- a response code (200/403/404): a bare response with no page; works with the PHP file. It suits cases where filtered visitors need to see nothing, but a person filtered by mistake will see a blank screen.
Offer link parameters
If the offer is an affiliate network link, set up parameter rules: for example, Set sub1 = {click_id} so the network's postback finds the right click, or Rename fbclid → sub1. Only the offer sees these rules; in the log and on the White Page, parameters stay as they arrived. More on linking clicks and conversions in click ID and Sub ID.
Step 2. Filtering: who gets through to the offer
Check strictness
The Soft / Balanced / Strict switch. Below the heading you can see which platform the protection has been tuned for.
| Level | What it blocks | Risk of losing real people |
|---|---|---|
| Soft | IP blacklists and automated bots | Minimal |
| Balanced | Plus VPNs, proxies, data centers, a daily per-IP click limit | Low; suits most campaigns |
| Strict | Plus IPv6, required JS, minimum time on page, a hard per-IP limit, the live interaction check | May cut some targeted traffic |
A new flow starts with “Other source + Balanced”. Once a source is chosen, platform-specific values are filled in: for Facebook Ads, for example, the referrer check is off because the in-app browser often drops it, while for Google Ads required JS is on, since the platform passes the gclid.
Tip. If you have already changed switches by hand, changing the strictness or source brings up a Replace your protection settings? window with a “before → after” list. Read it instead of clicking Apply out of habit.
Protection
Below are the switch cards: Cloaking, the main one, without which everyone sees the White Page; blocking by IP blacklists, VPN and proxy, data center ASNs, headless browsers, IPv6; required JS execution; the live interaction check. This is also where Shadow mode lives: the filter blocks nobody and only marks who it would have blocked. It is useful when you suspect you are losing conversions; it works with the PHP file, while on the JS tag the filter blocks as usual.
How the evaluation works: some checks block a visit immediately (a blacklist, an obvious bot browser, an audience rule), and the remaining signals add up to a trust score: each suspicious signal adds a penalty, and if the total exceeds the threshold, the visitor sees the White Page. More on the methods in how to filter out bots, and the full path of a visit step by step in how a cloaker works.
Audiences
Countries, devices, OS, browsers, languages, time zones, cities, regions. Each list has two modes: Allowed (let in only what is listed) and Denied (let in everyone except what is listed). An empty list restricts nothing. Most often this is where you set the campaign's geo; a visit from another country gets the reason “Country not allowed”.
From the Professional plan you also get networks (ASN), ISPs, referring sites, the campaign schedule, the per-IP click limit and warm-up: the first N clicks of a flow see the White Page without any checks, because at the start of a campaign with a new link the first visitors are usually spy tools and automated hits.
Step 3. Tracker
In Cloaking mode this step is optional. If you run traffic through an external tracker (Keitaro, Binom, RedTrack, Voluum and others), choose it here: the dashboard will show the external_id={click_id} parameter for the offer link and the postback URL, and CR and revenue will appear in the cloaker's statistics.
In modes with the tracker, this is where you set campaign parameters, the affiliate network and the payout per lead and sale, the cost model (CPC, CPM, from the link, CPA, RevShare) and the unique visitor window, within which a repeat visit is not counted as unique.
Step 4. Launch
- Status: Active means the flow is running; Draft and Paused mean the link works but everyone sees the White Page.
- IP whitelist: addresses that go straight to the offer without checks. The Add my IP button is for your own test clicks.
- Note: for yourself and your team, such as “creatives from Sept 12” or “test budget”.
Click Save flow, and the list opens with a “Flow created” message.
Connecting your site and going live
In the flow row, open More → Connect and choose a method: the JS tag as the first line in <head> or the PHP file in the site root. Click Check my page; the Installed mark should appear. Details and common mistakes are in how to connect a cloaker to your site.
Then click Copy ad link in the flow row and paste it into the ad platform. The ad link does not change with the number of offers or with edits to the flow.
The first check: the log and Diagnostics
- Click log: every visit with its decision and reason: “Allowed”, “VPN or proxy”, “Before filtering” and dozens more. The reasons are explained in why a click went to the White Page.
- Dashboard: how many visits passed and how many were filtered, plus the traffic quality score.
- Diagnostics: a review of the flow over the past week: past visits are replayed against the current settings, and you see which filter is cutting traffic and what it may be costing you.
Do not be alarmed by a high pass rate: if the platform passes a click ID and you are buying traffic, most visitors may reach the offer, and that is normal. The opposite picture should worry you: if very few visits get through to the offer, the rules are probably cutting real people along with the bots.
Presets and copies: how not to set up the same thing twice
Once you have more than one flow, settings start repeating: the same countries, the same strictness, the same set of protections. Two tools save you from rebuilding them every time.
- Traffic presets (the Presets section): a saved set of rules: audience lists, schedule, protection switches, per-IP click limit, warm-up, minimum time on page, platform and strictness. In a new flow you choose a preset in step 1 and it fills in the form. It is a one-time fill: the flow keeps its own copy of the rules, and later edits to the preset no longer change it.
- Duplicate flow: in the More menu of the flow row. The copy is created as a Draft and opens for editing right away. Shadow mode and the shield are not carried over to the copy.
When to change the settings of a live flow
When you edit a flow, changes take effect right after saving, from the next visit, and the ad link stays the same. But not everything should be changed on the fly:
| What you change | Risk | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Strictness, individual protection switches | Medium | Check the loss estimate in Diagnostics first |
| Geo and audiences | Low | Compare with the targeting in the ad platform |
| Offer or weights | Low | Handy for tests |
| White Page | Low | Make sure the new page opens; ArtisanClo also checks the White Page of active flows every morning |
Common cloaker setup mistakes
- Turning on Strict at the first launch: without data on your traffic, it is easy to cut your own buyers.
- Setting geo too narrowly: buyers who are roaming or in a neighboring time zone end up on the white page.
- Leaving the status as Draft: the log will show “Flow is not running”.
- Enabling referrer blocking for Facebook: the in-app browser often drops the referrer.
- Not rechecking the connection after editing the site: the code moved, and the page is visible to everyone.
If something goes wrong, run through the symptom checks in cloaker not working; platform specifics are collected in the traffic source catalog. And remember: filter settings do not override platform policies; the ad and the page people see must comply with them. The requirements are covered in Meta advertising policies and Google Ads policies.
The bottom line
Cloaker setup in ArtisanClo means a White Page and a source, then a four-step flow: destinations, filtering, tracker, launch. Start with Balanced and the campaign's geo, connect your site with one of the two methods, check the connection and look at the first visits in the log. From there, settings are refined based on data rather than guesswork; that is what decision reasons and Diagnostics are for.
